Theatre review: The Fever Syndrome

Hampstead Theatre may now be run by Roxana Silbert but some things don't change, and it remains London's main home for That American Play Where An Extended Family Gets Together After A Long Time, Preferably At Thanksgiving But That’s Optional. Silbert herself directs the latest iteration of a play every American playwright seems, for some reason, to be legally obligated to write and just change the character names. The twist is Alexis Zegerman isn't even American so The Fever Syndrome is... a tribute act maybe? It does tick every other box, including the ever-popular Asshole Genius add-on feature, as the excuse for bringing three siblings and their partners to the New York brownstone they grew up in is their father receiving a lifetime achievement award. Richard (Robert Lindsay) is an obstetrician and IVF pioneer, who still bears a grudge against the Republicans for delaying his research on religious grounds, meaning Britain beat America to the first test tube baby.

Theatre review: The Lady From The Sea

The Lady From The Sea is Ellida (Nikki Amuka-Bird,) second wife to Dr Wangel (Finbar Lynch.) After an initially happy marriage, Ellida has become distant in recent years, and her husband suspects she has unresolved feelings for a lover from her past. In a turn of events that reflects Ibsen's ahead-of-his-time fascination with psychology, the doctor decides on a radical cure, inviting her former suitor Arnholm (Tom McKay) to visit. Wangel's hunch is correct but he's miscalculated: Arnholm isn't the man Ellida still has feelings for. Instead her unfinished business is with a sailor, her first love at the age of sixteen, who vowed they'd be bound forever before running away to escape a murder charge. She believes he's somehow found out that she's married someone else, and her depression comes from feeling she's betrayed him.

Theatre review: The Last Days of Troy

The Globe's contribution to the WWI centenary sees all four of this year's new plays themed around bloody conflicts. The first is the mythical Trojan War, and Simon Armitage gives us his version of the Iliad in The Last Days of Troy. In a war whose alleged purpose is to recover the absconded queen Helen (Lily Cole,) the Greeks have been laying siege to Troy for a decade. Following an argument between general Agamemnon (David Birrell) and the virtually indestructible Achilles (Jake Fairbrother,) the great warrior is refusing to fight, leading to an extended stalemate. Achilles took offence at Agamemnon demanding one of his concubines, but the cunning politician Odysseus (Colin Tierney) knows his affections really lie with his cousin Patroclus (Brendan O'Hea.) Odysseus thinks he knows a way to get Achilles angry, and back in the fray.

Theatre review: A Life of Galileo

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: The RSC isn't inviting the Press to this until Tuesday.

To round off the RSC's "A World Elsewhere" season, looking at what else was going on in the world during Shakespeare's lifetime, we have a 20th century classic that deals with one of Shakespeare's exact contemporaries, Brecht's A Life of Galileo. Always strapped for cash, Galileo Galilei passes off the Dutch invention, the telescope, as one of his own. He gets found out but not before the new tool gives him a new look at the heavens, and he realises he's found proof of Copernicus' theory that the Earth rotates around the Sun. The fact that the theory is considered heretical by the Catholic Church doesn't dim his enthusiasm or deter him from sharing his knowledge with the people. But the Church won't let mere evidence get in the way of centuries of teaching, and soon the Inquisition has taken an interest, demanding that Galileo betray his science and abjure his theory.

Theatre review: The Orphan of Zhao

Next up in the "A World Elsewhere" season is the first Chinese play ever to be staged at the RSC, The Orphan of Zhao. Although its provenance is slightly less straightforward than that - the story has been retold on stage in China for centuries, with the best-known version being Ji Junxiang's 14th century telling, with 17th century amendments by Zang Maoxun. What we have here is a new adaptation by James Fenton, taken from a variety of original Chinese sources (and adding a new ending to tidy up a nagging plot hole.) Gregory Doran directs, making this either his final production as Chief Associate, or his first as Artistic Director, or neither, or both. The publicity has been keen to call the play the "Chinese Hamlet" although the main similarity is in this being a bloody revenge tragedy - The Orphan of Zhao is a much more epically sprawling affair, and at times a gripping one.